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Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag "Rate This Mission" system revealed

Ubisoft to analyse player feedback for future games.

You can rate each mission in Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag, Ubisoft has revealed.

The company told Eurogamer it added the optional feature to help the developers in Ubisoft Montreal create better missions in future games.

"The idea behind this feature is to be able to get the input of our players on their appreciation of each mission," Assassin's Creed 4 associate producer Sylvain Trottier told Eurogamer. "The rating is anonymous and is sent to our servers to be analysed.

"It's an idea that came out of discussions between our creative director Jean Guesdon and our executive producer Sébastien Puel. It was implemented early in the production, more than one year ago. It's also being used during our playtest sessions to gather the player's feedback."

Eurogamer YouTube Editor Ian Higton noticed the feature in a recent hands-on event hosted by Ubisoft (watch his video preview below).

Here's how it works:

"During a recent press event I was given a three hour hands-on with a couple of AC4:BF's memory sequences (think chapters)," Ian explained. "Each sequence was broken up into smaller story missions. After each story mission you are presented with a stats screen showing how well you 'synced' your memory of the event. On the bottom right of that screen was a small box containing five stars and the text: 'Rate This Mission.' By highlighting the box you could then rate the mission out of five. It took seconds to do and was not compulsory - sometimes I completely ignored it."

"It's fully optional," producer Sylvain Trottier added. "It's a way for our players to tell us directly whether they liked or not the mission. It's a survey if you prefer. It will help us know which missions are the favourites and which one people like less."

Trottier said the system was a "test", and he was unsure if it will be used in all future Ubisoft titles.

"Maybe, we don't know," he said. "It's the first time as far as I know that we are doing this. It's a test, we don't know how much data we will collect from there and don't know if people will use it or not but we think it was worth trying it to get the direct feedback from our players."

Watch on YouTube